Spot silver and gold ended mixed on Wednesday, with the former off a fraction of a percent while gold was up about one percent. In what Reuters describes as “volatile trading,” gold was said to have been “boosted by firmer oil prices that prompted investors to shuffle positions while largely shrugging off the firm U.S. dollar.”

“A whipsaw in oil is spurring the biggest price swings for gold in almost nine months,” reports Bloomberg, pointing out that the correlation between the two “rose close to 0.4 today, the strongest link since July 2013. A reading of 1 means the prices move in lockstep.” It quotes one trader predicting “higher volatility in gold with oil and interest rate-hike uncertainty,” but another tells MarketWatch that despite volatility between now and year’s end, “I don’t see a sustained move one way or the other. I think we range trade for a while and attempt to consolidate gold around the $1,200 level and silver above $16.”

“Sentiment toward gold is at such a bearish extreme,” begins a MarketWatch analysis, that “it seems as if every market seer is saying it’s time to buy because nearly everyone else has been selling.” It cites the proprietor of a sentiment tracking service, who calls an early November sentiment showing that just 3% of traders were bullish, one of “the most extreme we have seen.” He compares it to a 98% bullish reading in August 2011, “just as gold was about to embark on a journey from more than $1,900 an ounce down into the $1,100s.” Among the strongest of the bearish-is-bullish adherents are the Elliott Wave practitioners, two of whom expressed their optimistic forecasts for gold and silver last week.

In a Mineweb article published earlier this week, by Lawrence Williams and headlined “Elliott Wave analyst sees big gold and silver price surge ahead,” Williams reference’s Wikipedia’s definition of Elliott Wave as “a form of technical analysis that some traders use to analyze financial market cycles and forecast market trends by identifying extremes in investor psychology, highs and lows in prices, and other collective factors.”

In addition to the analyst cited by Mineweb,Peter Goodburn, another prominent Elliott Wave adherent is Avi Gilburt, whose articles are regularly published on Seeking Alpha.

Gilburt, who is more an analyst of, than advocate for precious metals, takes up their cause in his latest missive. “I do not often write about the metals on MarketWatch,” he begins, “but have seen too many bearish articles calling for the death to the metals, so I felt compelled to speak up. While many are now saying it is time to sell metals, I will have to disagree. The time to sell your metals was several years ago. Now is the time to start looking to buy them back.”

While Reuters pegs Tuesday’s gains in gold and silver to a falling dollar, a Bloomberg article headlines Russia adding to its gold reserves as a major factor in gold topping $1,200 an ounce on its way to a two-week high. “The fact that Russia is buying more gold instead of diversifying into another currency or buying more dollars is a big positive,” said one trader, in response to a report that Russia has purchased about 150 tonnes of gold so far this year, almost twice its 2013 buy, including 35 tonnes since the end of September.

But in Ukraine, according to a Zero Hedge post, the head of the country’s central bank said during a TV interview that “in the vaults of the central bank there is almost no gold left,” adding that there’s “a small amount of gold bullion left, but it’s just 1% of reserves.” Earlier this year the IMF put Ukraine’s gold holdings at 42.3 tonnes, or 8% of total reserves. Zero Hedge concludes: “now that the disappearance of Ukraine’s gold has been confirmed, perhaps it is time to refresh the “unconfirmed” story that a little after the current Ukraine regime took power the bulk of Ukraine’s gold was taken to the United States.”

Q: Gold plunged immediately after the [Oct. 31] BoJ announcement [that it would expand its asset purchases], which came only days after the Federal Reserve announced the end of QE. Where do you see gold headed in 2015?

Faber: I think it will go up. But can it go down first? Yes. In general, I would say the game that central bankers are playing is very clear: They start out with QE1 in the U.S., and then that forced essentially other central banks to do the same, to also go QE. They’re kind of passing each other the ball. One stops, the other one starts. It’s basically a game designed to kill the purchasing power of paper money. I’m not sure they’re aware of it, but in my view, this is the beginning of the end of paper money in this century.

And asked about physical gold vs. mining shares, Faber says: In general, my advice to investors is to own physical gold and not gold mining shares. Because in a disaster scenario, you don’t know what financial assets will be worth, whereas physical gold is in your possession.”…Read more>>>

With gold said to be “surprisingly volatile, with sweeps up and down this week,” Tuesday was an up day, as spot gold and silver added more than 1.5%, with the gains attributed to a falling dollar and increased physical demand. “Retail demand is very strong since prices came off,” according to one trader quoted by Reuters, who added that “Asia is also showing steady buying interest.”

Trading in gold futures on Friday was more than double the 100-day average, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, which also points out that “Gold’s 14-day relative-strength index in the previous five sessions was below 30, a level that suggests to some traders who study technical charts that prices may be poised to rebound. The gauge climbed to 36 today.”

And Coin News reports that weekly sales of gold coins “were the highest since mid-January when new 2014-dated American Gold Eagle and American Gold Buffalo coins ignited buying. Silver coin sales were on a tear until mid-week when the U.S. Mint announced that its Silver Eagles sold out.”

With silver hitting a 56-month low, the gold/silver ratio is now pushing 73, a 66-month high, but if an in-depth chart analysis published by SilverSeek — “Time Running Out on Silver Bear” — proves correct, that could change in weeks, not months. It predicts that November is “the time for the present silver bear market to end, and for silver to begin its next leg higher within its primary bull market.”

Spot gold and silver gained 0.3% and 0.6%respectively on Tuesday, while futures prices doubled up that percentage, on what a Bloomberg articlesees as the perception that the Fed will continue its low interest rate policy. It notes that interest rate futures “indicated the odds of a U.S. increase at about 46.2 percent by October 2015, down from 55 percent a week earlier.” That notion is seconded by a USA Gold market report that gold “remains underpinned by global growth risks and the expectations that the central banks of the world will maintain their über-accommodative policy stances in hopes of mitigating those risks.” It adds that “The European Central Bank is in the forefront on that meme these days.”

“Concern that economic malaise in Europe will spread has helped revive gold demand,” reports Bloomberg, noting that “The 39 percent jump in net-long positions in futures and options last week was the biggest since June, U.S. data show.” And according to a UBS analyst quoted, “This scenario continues to be supportive for gold, as it allows for more room to rebuild positions in the near term should investor doubts on global growth and uncertainties on the timing of Fed rate hikes linger.”